Express & Star

Patients faced long waits in ambulances outside Dudley's hospital

Hundreds of patients were forced to wait more than 30 minutes outside Dudley's main hospital in one month, figures have revealed.

Published
Ambulances have faced long waits outside Russells Hall Hospital

More than 420 patients had to wait half an hour in ambulances after arriving at Russells Hall Hospital in October.

While nearly 90 were left waiting for more than an hour.

Diane Wake, chief executive of the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Russells Hall, said they work hard to ensure patients are seen and assessed 'as quickly and efficiently as possible'.

Over this year, between January and October, there has been more than 2,100 breaches of the 30-minute ambulance handover target, while there have been 423 breaches where patients have been waiting over 60 minutes.

Ms Wake said: "We work very hard to ensure patients who arrive by ambulance are seen and assessed then handed over as quickly and efficiently as possible.

"During October we had fewer patients waiting either more than half an hour or more than an hour compared to the previous month.

"We have increased resources and carried out improvement cycles and the trust performs very well in terms of triaging all ambulance arrivals within a 15 minute time frame.

"We continue to work with our partners across the health economy on how best to continue to improve handover times and ensure our patients receive the appropriate care needed."

Last month, we revealed that ambulance batching was also taking place at the hospital. The trust's November board papers said the trust had seen a significant increase in attendances and ambulance arrivals, which around 300 attendances daily.

The trust was set to discuss the batching further with the ambulance service.